Trás-os-Montes, Wonderful Kingdom

Episcopal Palace - Miranda do Douro

Miguel Torga, the great writer, who is from this region, called it "Wonderful Kingdom".
And he did so with a knowledge that was becoming of him. Born in the rocky bends of its mountains, in granitic undulations where, for many years, stones and castles mingled, this is where Portugal acquired a solid structure marked by virtually inaccessible frontiers which protect valuables and assets that would consolidate a nationality.
The rigour of the structure of this land manifests itself in various aspects, and it has always been that way.
Many old patrimonial testimonies tell us of the history of its people; since the Neolithic period, temples and objects explain man's creative and evolutionary fecundity, which has been sheltered among the rocky hills from time immemorial, and he has lived in harmony with it. They are delights of an intelligence that originated between the need to survive and the desire to expand his generous spirit moulded by the "interiorizing" of his existence.
Towns all over are full of legends which, it turns out, are but the subduing of great feats woven in the areas closest to the limits where conflicts traditionally broke out between those who coveted this corner of the world and those who fought to keep it theirs.
So many peoples, after all, who, every place they went through, each left behind countless vestiges; noteworthy among these are roads and monuments of a romanisation which shook this region from one end to the other.
As it turns out, in the "kingdom of wonderful things", be it in its landscapes or in its convictions, the Trás-os-Montes region has pages of opulent and enviable historical ancestry which can be read in its castles, cathedrals, of the nobility and spontaneity that emerges from works by various poets who tirelessly sing it.
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